


Can the Circle Be Unbroken

by merelypassingtime



Series: MorMor Ficlets [2]
Category: Sherlock (TV)
Genre: Angst with a Happy Ending, Backstory, I Don't Even Know, I'm Bad At Tagging, M/M, but I still tagged it 'Sherlock' because I didn't know what else to do, for a non-canon character, mormor, unconventional backstory
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-04-24
Updated: 2018-04-24
Packaged: 2019-04-27 05:17:20
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,661
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14418498
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/merelypassingtime/pseuds/merelypassingtime
Summary: There must have been a time before Seb lived with his grandpa, but Seb couldn’t recall it.(A sequel of sorts to Caoineadh, about Seb's childhood. Can be read as a stand alone, but, well, Caoineadh is only seven hundred words long...)





	Can the Circle Be Unbroken

**Author's Note:**

  * For [fabricdragon](https://archiveofourown.org/users/fabricdragon/gifts).



> Writers are too often alone in their own head  
> To tell if their words make sense when read  
> So, though I have no cold facts or hard data  
> I can tell you I deeply love my wonderful beta  
> Thanks always, no-reason-at-all ;)  
> 
> 
>  
> 
> For FabricDragon, who asked. :")

There must have been a time before Seb lived with his grandpa, but Seb couldn’t recall it. What he did know about that time was secondhand, overheard at holiday gatherings, told in hushed tones by his aunts gossiping in the kitchen, always with a ‘poor boy’ or a ‘bless their hearts’ thrown in, or in solemn, would-be wise tones by his uncles smoking on the back porch, but most often it came to him whispered with scorn by his many cousins.

It got under his skin, just as it was meant to. It was when he was about twelve that a particularly nasty barb from his cousin Danny about his slut of a mother and his unknown father made Seb snap and go for him swinging. It took three of his uncles to pull him off a cowering Danny, and Grandpa had bundled him off in his old pickup before the fuss died down.

The drive back up the mountain to their cabin was made in a heavy silence, one that only got worse when they reached home and Grandpa took the fiddle case from where it hung from the truck’s gun rack and started up the deer trail to the top of the mountain. Not knowing what else to do, Seb followed him.

At the summit there was large boulder. The two of them had sat together on it often while taking a break during hunting trips, and when Grandpa had a new sort of snare he wanted to teach him to set, or just to appreciate the sunrise over the mountains and admire the haze that gave them their name. 

Now, Grandpa sat down heavily, patting the rock beside him. After Seb perched there, Grandpa heaved a great sigh. “I suppose it is time we talk about your ma. I ain’t been looking forward to this, so I put it off longer than I ought to’ve, so my guess is that you know most of it. 

“Yeah, your ma made some bad calls and didn’t turn out to be the upright, god fearing woman the family thinks she oughta be. People are always quick to judge and preach and tell you what’s right and what they think you oughta do and how you should be. To hell with all of them. They don’t know what’s right, nobody does. When a room full of smart, educated men can sit and decide that it’s right to send boys off to die for nothing, you know that ain’t nobody got the answers.”

Grandpa shifted on the boulder, stretching out the prosthetic he had in place of the leg he’d left behind in Vietnam, and laid a hand on Seb’s shoulder. “You don’t ever let someone else tell you what’s bad, you decide that for yourself and stand by your conviction. And if sometimes that choice means you’ve got to stand up for yourself, well then, you know I’m gonna have your back.”

The hand on his shoulder moved up to ruffle his hair playfully. “Not that you’ll need it. You were doing a fine job whooping that little shit up all on your own. Bet he thinks twice ’fore he smarts off to you again.”

“Yeah, probably,” Seb allowed. “Though I almost wish he’d try.”

“That’s my hellion. Never back down from a fight worth the fighting.” Grandpa ruffled his hair again, then reached down to unfasten the clasps on the fiddle case. “Now that we’ve got that squared away, how about you show me if you’ve been working on your finger exercises like I showed ya.”

Of course Seb had been. The fiddle was the thing he loved the most, next to his grandpa. Soon the air rang with the riotous trill of the fiddle, carefree and bursting with joy.

The second time Grandpa took him up the mountain for a talk was after he was suspended from school for a week after being caught with a hand down the pants of the football team’s wide receiver.

Again, Grandpa was silent until they were sitting on their rock. It was there, with the quiet woods stretching out around them in a calm, green blanket, that Grandpa met his eye levelly and said, “I’m always telling you to think for yourself and not let anyone else tell you what is what. It’d be pretty dumb of me to take all that learning back the first time you do something different. 

“I’ll not lie, you’ve been given a hard row to hoe,” he said, looking sad, “but, the way I see it, there ain’t enough love in the world. So if you can find it, however you find it, you hold on with both hands.”

Grandpa died a handful of months later, trapped in a hospital and attached to a bunch of machines. Seb held his hand until the very end, ignoring the whispers around him. Afterwards, Seb walked away from the bedside and out of the hospital, his eyes dry and his heart empty.

On the day of the funeral, while the family buried him in a flat, soulless memorial park with all the fuss and feathers that Grandpa had hated so much in life, Seb sat on that boulder on top of the mountain and played every song Grandpa had ever taught him. He played for hours, well after the sun had set, ending with an old gospel song that had been one of Grandpa’s favorites.

When Seb finished it, his arms and fingers ached, but his heart was lighter. He set the fiddle down on the rock and walked away, swearing he’d never play again.

The next day, Child Services showed up at the cabin to collect him and place him into foster care, but they couldn’t find him. 

No one saw Seb again for more than two years. They assumed he was dead until he turned up at the recruitment office on his eighteenth birthday.

He joined the army, just like grandfather had before him.

 

“Jim, why do we have a violin suddenly?” Seb asked, eyeing the expensive-looking case.

From the next room, Jim shouted an answer over the noise of the running shower. “Oh, yeah! I stole that from Sherlock’s flat. Left him a sweet little note too so he’d know it was me.”

“Okay. Should I step up our security in case he comes looking for it?”

“Nah, he doesn’t have a clue where we are. Besides, I’ll send it back to him in a few days with a box of chocolate and some roses.”

Seb hummed in agreement, never taking his eyes from the violin case as he added absently, “Maybe you should send him some broken pieces of a violin first, give him a scare.”

“Ooo! Good one, love! I knew I kept you around for a reason.” 

Seb nodded, even though he knew Jim couldn’t see, still transfixed by the violin. Slowly, he reached out to flick open the clasps, telling himself that he would just check for cameras and tracking devices, nothing more. The violin inside was a work of art, all beautiful lines and rich aged wood. Seb reached out a finger to trace the graceful curl of an F hole and gently strummed the strings.

The next thing he knew, the violin was tucked under his chin, the bow already moving to draw out the first note of “Can the Circle Be Unbroken.” He played it slow and sweet, his long, unpracticed fingers slipping occasionally on the strings but growing in surety with every note.

When the song was over he wiped angerly at the hot tears on his cheeks with the back of the hand holding the bow, stopping them before they could mar the surface of the lovely instrument. He took a deep breath, then huffed it out before setting the bow back to the strings, launching into a series of faster songs, determined to regain all his fingers’ swiftness.

He was only a little way into “The Devil’s Dream” when a voice sang out from the doorway to the bathroom, matching the music. Jim stood there, towel-clad and eyes closed in concentration, singing along in a lovely lilting language that Seb didn’t recognize but guessed to be Irish. 

Surprise made him miss a few notes, but Jim’s clear, high voice never faltered, and Seb quickly found the tune again, finishing the short song easily. The last note lingered long in the air and longer in Seb’s chest, ringing brightly in the hollow part of his heart.

“I didn’t know you could sing,” Seb said, grinning across to where Jim was still standing and looking dazed.

“I don’t sing. Well, I haven’t. Not in a long time.” 

Jim still sounded lost somehow, so Seb laid the violin back down in its case and walked over to wrap his arms around him. He pressed a kiss to Jim’s forehead, then pulled him in close. “Well, you sing beautifully. You shouldn’t keep that a secret.”

“You’re one to talk,” Jim said with some of his customary bite. “I don’t remember seeing violin playing on your CV.”

“I don’t play the violin. Not really.”

Jim gestured at the instrument with a tilt of his head that said, _Clearly you do._

“No. The violin is for snobs, I play the fiddle, or I used to. When my grandpa died though… Well, the music stopped.”

“Well, that’s not any fun.”

“For you, darling, I just might be willing to take it back up. As long as you’re willing to sing along.”

Jim sniffed, trying and failed to sound annoyed. “Fine, I guess I can do that. But only for you, Seb.”

“Yeah,” Seb agreed. “Only for you.”

This time when Seb stooped down, it was to press his lips to Jim’s in a gentle kiss. As they met, Seb felt the humming in his chest again, filling the void in his heart with music once more.

Somehow, the emptiness there seemed to be smaller.


End file.
